War with Iraq is okay - letters to the editor - Letter to the Editor

Humanist, Jan-Feb, 2003 by Clarence Williams

I object to the Humanist magazine's unbalanced discussion of President George W. Bush's actions regarding Iraq and the Saddam Hussein regime. I believe in Humanist Manifesto II and find nothing in it that prevents me from supporting Bush's actions to date. A war with Iraq in order to disarm its weapons of mass destruction can and should be supported by humanists. (Individual freedom of thought means, however, that many will disagree and I support their right to do so.)

Bush, in the words of the manifesto, renounced "the resort to violence and force as a method of solving international disputes." He hasn't ruled violence out as a last resort, of course, but neither did the signers of Humanist Manifesto II. Bush too believes "in the peaceful adjudication of differences by international courts and by the development of the arts of negotiation and compromise." He and his predecessors have spent years in desperate but futile negotiation with this Iraqi tyrant. "War is obsolete. So is the use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons," (Humanist Manifesto II, "World Com-munity," point thirteenth).

As prefaced in the document, "Nazism has shown the depths of brutality of which humanity is capable." (This is why Humanist Manifesto II replaced the first manifesto.) By disarming a tyrant who threatens the entire world with weapons of mass destruction, who has invaded two neighbors (Iran and Kuwait), and who has already killed his own people with poison gas, Bush is actually following the humanist tradition. If only we'd had a leader like him when Hitler first confronted the world, we might have been spared the Holocaust.

Presenting only one side of the Iraq issue and making readers think that only your view is in keeping with humanist principles is wrong, and that isn't in keeping with the humanist tradition.

Clarence Williams
Monument, CO